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US woman 'guilty' of killing fetus, mum
Source: Agencies |
September 22, 2012, Saturday
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AN American woman who confessed to trying to steal a baby by attacking a pregnant woman and slicing out her full-term fetus has been convicted of killing them both.
Jurors in Milwaukee on Thursday deliberated for less than two hours before finding Annette Morales-Rodriguez guilty of two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the October 2011 deaths of the mother and fetus.
Morales-Rodriguez, 34, faces a mandatory life sentence when she's sentenced on December 14, though a judge could allow for the possibility of parole. Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
A key piece of evidence during the trial was a videotaped police interview in which Morales-Rodriguez described her attack on 23-year-old Maritza Ramirez-Cruz. She admitted luring Ramirez-Cruz to her home, bludgeoning and choking her into unconsciousness and using a small blade to carve out the fetus. She told investigators she was desperate to have a son, that she had faked a pregnancy and that she devised a plan to steal an unborn baby as her supposed due date approached.
Blunt trauma
Ramirez-Cruz died due to a combination of blood loss, blunt trauma and asphyxiation, and the male fetus died as a result of her death, a medical examiner testified.
In the police interview, Morales-Rodriguez explained that she was desperate to give her boyfriend a son but that she couldn't "stay pregnant." She said she twice pretended to be pregnant, only to claim each time that she miscarried. The third time she considered another scenario: stealing the fetus from a pregnant Hispanic woman, she said.
She described how she went to a Latino community center and found Ramirez-Cruz, a mother of three in her 40th week of pregnancy.
She offered Ramirez-Cruz a ride and brought her to Morales-Rodriguez's home. There, she bashed Ramirez-Cruz in the head with a baseball bat and choked her until she passed out. She said she then put duct tape over the younger woman's mouth and nose and wrapped a plastic bag around her head. She then used a small blade to slice the victim open from hip to hip and pulled out a stillborn boy.
Jurors in Milwaukee on Thursday deliberated for less than two hours before finding Annette Morales-Rodriguez guilty of two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the October 2011 deaths of the mother and fetus.
Morales-Rodriguez, 34, faces a mandatory life sentence when she's sentenced on December 14, though a judge could allow for the possibility of parole. Wisconsin does not have the death penalty.
A key piece of evidence during the trial was a videotaped police interview in which Morales-Rodriguez described her attack on 23-year-old Maritza Ramirez-Cruz. She admitted luring Ramirez-Cruz to her home, bludgeoning and choking her into unconsciousness and using a small blade to carve out the fetus. She told investigators she was desperate to have a son, that she had faked a pregnancy and that she devised a plan to steal an unborn baby as her supposed due date approached.
Blunt trauma
Ramirez-Cruz died due to a combination of blood loss, blunt trauma and asphyxiation, and the male fetus died as a result of her death, a medical examiner testified.
In the police interview, Morales-Rodriguez explained that she was desperate to give her boyfriend a son but that she couldn't "stay pregnant." She said she twice pretended to be pregnant, only to claim each time that she miscarried. The third time she considered another scenario: stealing the fetus from a pregnant Hispanic woman, she said.
She described how she went to a Latino community center and found Ramirez-Cruz, a mother of three in her 40th week of pregnancy.
She offered Ramirez-Cruz a ride and brought her to Morales-Rodriguez's home. There, she bashed Ramirez-Cruz in the head with a baseball bat and choked her until she passed out. She said she then put duct tape over the younger woman's mouth and nose and wrapped a plastic bag around her head. She then used a small blade to slice the victim open from hip to hip and pulled out a stillborn boy.
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